


Everything Under the Sun

by Guu



Series: Paper Windows [8]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Established Relationship, M/M, Paper Windows 'verse, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-24
Updated: 2014-06-24
Packaged: 2018-02-05 23:58:48
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,741
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1836901
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Guu/pseuds/Guu
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There was a time before Cas, before driving a bus, before the flowers and forgotten birthdays and their shared mustard duvet, when Dean would wake up alone every day in a cold bed and think: this is it.</p>
<p>--</p>
<p>a glimpse into the events that led to the paper windows timeline.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Everything Under the Sun

There was a time before Cas, before driving a bus, before the flowers and forgotten birthdays and their shared mustard duvet, when Dean would wake up alone every day in a cold bed and think, _this is it_. This was it for him, every day and night, the first and last thing that went through his mind. As good as it was going to get; a humid room with stale sheets, a shitty job and the permanent feeling that there was a hole in his chest, or maybe his throat, that wouldn’t ever be filled.

It went like that for a little over a year. He met Adela after his first actual panic attack, and she helped him get through it, even though she didn’t understand what Dean actually meant when he claimed he couldn’t ever clean the blood off of his hands. _You’ll pull through_ , she said. _You’re a good man_. Often, Dean didn’t have the heart to contradict her.

She also got him a job as a night guard to the bus station he ended up driving buses from. The shift wasn’t great but the pay allowed him to change the damp mattress he had been sleeping on. Long gone was the memory foam, but the new one didn’t creak every time Dean so much as touched it.

Laying still in the darkness, every night, accompanied only by the stray sounds of the street below his naked little balcony, he’d think about the kind of life he used to have. He had always been lonely but he had hardly ever been _alone_ , or at least had always been too busy to notice it. And now he could feel both so clearly. It was crippling, ripping through him, that thought. _This is it_.

Even after he got used to the notion, his mind would still supply those words, bittersweet, every night. Fleeting, passing, but never hurting any less. _This is it._

\---

He still woke up every day, went to work, for whomever’s sake.

\--

Cas appeared on his doorstep on a frozen Tuesday morning. Unlike Sam, he had more or less kept in touch. Not spectacularly so—Dean knew better than anybody that Cas wasn’t a permanent kind of fixture in his life,—but enough that Dean knew he was alive. According to Cas’ erratic text messages, he had been all over and then some, but had never said anything about visiting. At least not that Dean remembered.

Cas was dirty and he stunk. His hair was longer that Dean had ever seen it, and his clothes were rumpled in every which way.

“Hello, Cas,” Dean greeted, for once. He pretended like his heart hadn’t leapt in alarm. It was seven in the morning and Dean had just returned from his shift. His nose was cold, his lashes catching the early morning chill. Cas was _right there._

“Dean,” Cas said, whispering Dean’s name in a way that made it sound urgent, like a reverence. He didn’t look too bad, despite his appearance. He just seemed eager to get off the street.

\--

As shared over cheap coffee in Dean’s bare kitchen, Cas had been helping out in a homeless shelter in Detroit. He had been living there, too, until some punk with a grudge set the place on fire, destroying the few things Cas had collected over the year, and the hopes of many others in the process. The founder of the shelter had taken pity on Cas and given him a hundred bucks and told him to go back to the family he so often talked about. Shaken, Castiel had done the only thing he could think about at the time and took a bus all the way to New York. He confessed, years later, that he had nearly changed his mind. He had arrived at Dean’s address at midnight, tired and hungry and feeling nothing but wariness and trepidation, but he was there already, so something compelled him to at least say hello, goodbye.

“Hey man,” Dean said after Cas’ long exposition, “I’m sorry about what happened to you, but I’m glad you visited. How long are you staying?”

Cas shrugged into his third cup of coffee, his stomach no longer aching out of neglect, his skin warm from the hot, much needed shower Dean had allowed him to take.

“A couple of days,” he murmured, tone evident that he hadn’t planned so far ahead. “Just until I can find my footing again. If you don’t mind, that is.”

“Sure man, stay as long as you want,” Dean answered from the bedroom while Cas waited at the kitchen table. Trying to clean up the mess of a room he had wasn’t an easy task. He didn’t think Cas would mind, but for his friend to find out how little Dean had cared for his own place filled Dean with shame. He had never been able to give Cas a proper home, but at least for a few nights, he could try. _“Mi casa, su casa!”_

“There’s only one bed, tho,” Dean continued, giving another look at the room at large. It looked… decent, now. When he re-entered the kitchen he found Cas eyeing the chairs in there with longing, surely looking for another suitable spot to spend the night.

“No, Cas. I mean. We can share. If you’re okay with that.”  
\--

Cas went looking for a job the next day, but for a guy with no papers and no last name, he could only get single day shifts and gigs at shady places that weren’t worth the trouble they caused.

\--

“We should get you real documents for once,” Dean said over _chow mien_ one night, about a week into Cas’ stay. Cas was silent for a long while after that. That night, Dean learned that he wasn’t the only one carrying a burden.

Cas didn’t say a word in two days, but he allowed Dean to forge his papers.

Two weeks later Cas had a new ID, an SSN, and a job.

\--

It was odd, sharing a bed and an apartment with Cas, not knowing if he was going to take off without notice as he’d been prone to do. The days and weeks went by; Cas didn’t seem like he was ready to leave, and Dean didn’t seem like he was ready to kick him out. Cas switched from short term jobs to a more permanent one, and Dean started making space for him in the closet and in their shared bathroom cabinet.

When Dean woke up one morning to go to work and he stepped into the kitchen to find a pot of flowers with a post it note that said “I belong to Castiel, don’t throw me away” on it, he realized that Cas had finally moved in. So much so that Cas took over the little balcony and filled it with flowers once the Spring came in full. In May, when Dean had to renovate the lease on the apartment, he added Cas’ name to the contract. He mock-celebrated by buying Cas a bouquet of blue carnations, mostly as a joke, except that Cas was so touched by the gesture that he cried, thus starting a long-lasting tradition of floral gifts.

That December, when the air was cold again, snow coloring the trees and paving the streets with ice, Dean got offered a position as a bus driver rather than a security guard, and a decent enough bottle of whiskey from a co-worker to celebrate. Christmas was yet to come, but what the hell, Dean decided to go early on it. It wasn’t like he was expecting Cas to want to honour that particular holiday. So off they went, into the streets, bundled in old scarves and ratty woolen hats, to have some authentic chili and beer, and toast to nothing, really. Dean had the bottle hidden between his coats, and they opened it halfway through the park on their way back: two reckless, drunk, middle aged men with little to lose.

It didn’t matter, then, who stumbled into whom; just that kissing Cas felt like the warmth of the morning’s first coffee after a long, restless night. Like being grounded, for once, like being _there_ , where he was, where his mouth and his face and Cas’ hands were. He breathed Cas in, his stale breath, the taste of whiskey and spice strong on his mouth, and swallowed the smile that followed. They kissed on.

\--  
Reflecting back on it, that first morning after should have been incredibly awkward, but Dean had woken up to warmth and hair on his face and a leg thrown over his knees. He had groaned, disoriented, expecting to be nursing a rather inconvenient hangover that never really showed. He expected himself to freeze or to freak out, or to do whatever it is that Dean Winchesters did when they had just spent a night kissing their long-lost-best-friends-turned-roommates.

The room stunk of sweat and alcohol and humidity, and he wished he had opened the balcony door when they came home, before sliding into their bed.

_Their_ bed.

And just like that, whatever phantom fear had threatened to invade their living quarters disappeared, and Dean nosed Cas’ jaw and dropped a kiss on his neck. He was allowed to do that now, _kiss Cas_ , if Cas’ answering grumble and feeble attempt at pulling Dean closer to himself were any indication.

\--

Dean didn’t know how to say _don’t leave me_ , so he bought Cas an expensive mustard duvet and a used TV set instead. They didn’t celebrate Christmas, but they made time for each other on New Year, and even when all of Cas wasn’t always there and Dean was exhausted most of the time; when their apartment was constantly falling apart and the wallpaper looked more yellow than white; even then Dean could look at Cas and think, _this is it._

Two, three more years go by.

Dean goes to bed with half an eye on the faint light coming from the balcony door. Cas isn’t due to wake up for another three hours, but he still stirs to greet Dean when he slides beneath the sheets. Cas gives him a sloppy kiss, and as they shuffle and resettle on the mattress, before exhaustion wins him over, Dean’s mind says, _this is it, for the rest of your life._

The anxiety that used to follow those words never really comes.

Dean rests.

\--

fin

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to MajorEnglishEsquire and clotpoleofthelord for their help proof-reading this part ♥
> 
> There isn't a lot left of this verse to share, so I'm estimating maybe 2-3 more parts before we're done...


End file.
